[E]veryone thought that shifting the battle on abortion to the states would help anti-abortion groups. But in fact, what we’re seeing is that abortion rights groups are starting to rack up victories ...
[B]allot initiatives are turning out to be a real point of success for abortion rights groups...
[I]n Vermont and California, voters approved ballot initiatives that would explicitly establish a right to abortion in those state constitutions...
[Michigan] voters overwhelmingly said we want our state constitution to protect a right to abortion...
[T]here were three red states — Montana, Kansas, and Kentucky – [where] anti-abortion groups thought that voters of those red states would come out and say absolutely not. We do not want abortion. And in fact, in all three of those states those [anti-abortion] measures failed...
[B]ecause of the abortion issue, Democrats are actually making some gains in state legislatures…
Democrats now control the Pennsylvania legislature. That’s enormously important for access [to abortion], not just for Pennsylvania, but for women in West Virginia and in Ohio, where abortion is banned, because women from Ohio and West Virginia have been flooding into Pennsylvania to seek abortions...
In another example, look at Minnesota. There, the state Senate flipped the Democrats. They have control of both chambers of the legislature, plus the governor’s office, for the first time since 2013. And Democrats are really taking that as a mandate to achieve their legislative priorities. And that means they could do a mini Roe, essentially putting the protections of Roe into the state constitution...
[In Utah,] language written to defend polygamy is now language that is being used to defend abortion, and it’s working…
… I don’t think it’s what anyone expected when they wrote that constitution…
Republican legislatures may want to oppose abortion, but Republican voters, as in Wyoming, often have sort of a libertarian streak and think like, you know what? A decision to have an abortion is really up to the woman. I don’t want to interfere with that...
[W]hat we’ve seen in the last six months is that when you take abortion away or threaten to take it away, voters are going to come out to protect access to it…
[B]e careful what you wish for when you overturn Roe because [advocates] actually have something that might be even stronger up [their] sleeves...
[W]hen you put the right [to an abortion] into a state constitution, in most cases, it’s less contorted because when that right goes into the state constitution, it’s generally much more explicit than in the federal constitution. And when you put it in the constitution, you can make it much more expansive...
So take Michigan for an example. The right to abortion that was established by that ballot initiative that passed is far more expansive than anything that was in the US Constitution, far more expansive than Roe. It gives women control over the entire spectrum of choices in their reproductive health. That’s huge...
That’s not just sort of inserting the language of Roe into a state constitution. It’s not some sort of mini Roe. This is like maxi Roe. This is Roe on steroids..
… So I’ll trust you to go to YouTube and watch Sophia Rosing do her thing; I’d rather link you to this narrative by one of the long-suffering U Kentucky students attacked by this drunk violent racist.
About the video: It’s too bad for the worst among us that everyone’s got a camera these days and knows how to use it. This particular docudrama makes for irresistably engrossing viewing, so it’ll rack up a lot of views.
“Kiss your entire future away, babe,” says the camerawoman as Rosing spews it and spews it, and then hits everyone, including the policeman who shows up. Certainly her future at UK (Kentucky always makes the top ten most racist states lists, and for personal safety as well as reputational reasons, the school is going to have to let this … dynamic … white supremacist go); but she has looks, gumption, and the sort of straightforward approach to the race problem that guarantees her a political future in any number of Idaho congressional districts.
I’m gonna predict that maw and paw will bring out the jesus brigade to wrap her in their love and forgiveness. Cry like Jimmy Swaggart, Soph! If this happened a little further north, the folks would find some psychiatrist to attest to her years of emotional struggle; but it’s the southland, so I’m thinking it’ll be the jesus brigade.
And that’s what freedom looks like in Kentucky, baby!
Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan asks whether the latest dead eighteen year old – this one at the University of Kentucky, a grody football school whose frat system is exactly as disgusting as you’d imagine – might finally shame the nation into shutting down its collegiate slaughterhouses.
************
UD thanks Mondo for telling her about the latest.
Because America loves its fraternities, especially in l’Age de Trump, where it’s all about bullies and booze and Berettas. Identifying a loser and making him drink whiskey til he dies in agony is as American as apple pie, a rite of passage into manhood or into the beyond. When it gets so bad that 2,000 students rally against the Greek system, schools okay right well yeah we’ll look into the situation… Slap a wrist here and there for sure, and if much of the nationwide system features sophisticated drug operations protected by firearms, rampant rape, and the singling out of losers – people desperate to belong to our club – for death by poisoning, so be it. These boys represent the best of America.
**********
Now down south they got that famous frat/football nexus, and that’s a hell of a thing to watch in action.
“There are a lot of mediocre students at Yale who were superstars in their little county fairs, and now they’re in the Kentucky Derby and they’re not winning their races and they feel like it’s unfair because other students are doing better,” says one [Yale law school] faculty member…
One for the ages.
Return with me now to those glory days at one of this country’s establishments of higher learning, when Rick got down on his knees and begged Sebastian Telfair to gain his education at the University of Louisville. Telfair said yes! I will pursue my scholar/athlete career at your fine school, playing basketball, living in a university-provided brothel, and giving a big ol’ fuck you up the ass to my fake classes, all on the taxpayers’ dime — and the people of Kentucky could not have been more grateful and excited. To make matters even more wonderful, sports-mad James Ramsey, who would go on to become the nation’s highest paid public university leader by the simple expedient of stealing everything at UL that wasn’t nailed down, had just been appointed UL president!
Truly the stars were aligned at this fine school which some have taken, cruelly, to calling the U of Smell.
And now… Ladies and gentlemen of the jury! as Humbert would say: Look at this tangle of thorns.
Rick had to be gotten rid of because of sex, recruiting, financial and anything else you’d like to add scandals. Reduced to coaching Greek basketball, where the chain smoking, flame throwing fascists in the stands turn every game into a terrifying slaughter (holy shitkos), he is currently suing UL for forty million dollars haha nahnah got you you’ll pay up the ass for being mean to me while I was building a winning team even though we had to vacate all our wins cuz they was SO SO SO dirty. I’ll get you back, UL.
President Ramsay was forced to resign in disgrace for the aforementioned larceny plus overseeing the most pornographic sports program in the United States. UL’s suing him to try to get a few tens of millions back (it’s all been plowed into multifarious mcmansions up and down the Florida coast), and the latest on that is that during his reign Ramsay apparently told the then-chair of the board of trustees that a fellow trustee had bankrolled the brothel for the boys!! I do declare (fanning my lace stays with my perfumed hankie), it takes a whole lot for UL to do anything that would generate italics, bolding, and double exclamation marks, but this school constantly exceeds expectations.
… Uh, where we were? Oh, the hotly recruited Telfair... He was last seen ranting like a madman in court, where he was sentenced to prison for carrying spectacular weaponry (‘three loaded handguns, a submachine gun, ammunition, extended magazines and a ballistic vest’) in his car.
… The university also said its operations in the last fiscal year were dragged down by “nonrecurring” — meaning unusual — expenses.
Those included deferred compensation of $4.5 million owed to former Athletic Director Tom Jurich and a $5.5 million buyout of the contract of former basketball coach Rick Pitino, both of whom were fired after the program was swept up by a nationwide fraud and corruption sting into NCAA programs.
It’s always a pleasure to bankrupt ourselves and raise tuition by the highest percentage allowable in order to pay out huge bucks to assholes.
Oh, and on Pitino: Did you really think that $5.5 thing would cut it? He’s suing UL for FORTY MILLION.
Speaking of assholes, hold onto your hat as we sue our chiseling last president to see if we can’t get some money back from him! Meanwhile, though, legal expenses for that will add to our losses…
Zzzz… wha’?
How bout this.
In fact, an analysis of Forms 990 for approximately 100,000 organizations filing the annual report to the IRS in 2014 published recently by the Wall Street Journal found 2,700 nonprofit officials were paid more than $1 million. Although most were administrators at hospitals and universities, there were also many football coaches and executives at endowments like the Harvard Management Company. Nonprofit organizations respond that they are trying to attract the best candidates and are merely adopting compensation practices similar to those in the private sector.
Get it? See what happened? TAKE TO THE STREETS. FLOOD YOUR REPRESENTATIVE’S OFFICE WITH EMAILS. THIS IS A SERIOUS MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE.
Do I need to spell it out for you? Do you see what’s happening here?
You want to spend your kid’s tuition money on sky-rocketing multimillion dollar salaries for coaches and on twenty million dollar a year compensation for university money managers, and here comes the IRS to tell you that these aren’t appropriate non-profit expenditures! They even have the gall to say that giving all that money to coaches and money managers diverts tax-exempt money from students and shit! Whatever that means.
So they’re putting a crushing new tax on excess non-profit compensation, which means universities are likely to pull back on these amounts and you will have to pay the managers and coaches less.
*************
I know. So far this is all numbers and abstractions. Here is an actual story, from the University of Kentucky, of how it will be.
“The excise tax that was levied in the new tax bill is big,” [UK athletic director Mitch] Barnhart said. “That will have an impact on every athletic department.”
A change in the tax code requires non-profit entities to pay a 21 percent excise tax on payments to its five highest-paid employees that are making more than $1 million a year.
For every dollar over the $1 million mark, UK must pay the 21 percent tax, which for UK Athletics includes the salaries of men’s basketball coach John Calipari, football coach Mark Stoops and women’s basketball coach Matthew Mitchell.
According to figures reported to the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2017, Calipari was the highest-paid person on campus that year at $7.24 million, followed by Stoops at $3.9 million and Mitchell at $1.28 million.
The university also will be paying the excise tax on the salaries of Phillip Tibbs ($1,195,600), a physician, and Michael Karpf ($1,123,179), who ran the medical center until recently, UK spokesman Jay Blanton told the Herald-Leader.
With the new salary bump and potential bonuses outlined in the new amendment to Barnhart’s contract, the UK athletics director might top the $1 million mark in the near future. His base salary will be $1,025,000 starting in 2020, per the amendment.
This year’s figures were a part of the $147.7 million dollar 2019 budget approved by the university’s Board of Trustees recently, simply noted as “escalating operating expenses.”
How will these escalating expenses be paid? The same way other expenses are.
“How we make up for it on the other side is really difficult,” Barnhart said. “We have to work at that.”
I know you can do it, guys! A grassroots campaign of outraged professors, students, and parents will take to the streets and have that punitive 21% rolled back before you can say Nick Saban.
*****************
Again, here’s the challenge, stated simply:
Every organization that pays a salary of more than $1 million per year to any of its top five earning employees will face a stiff new 21 percent excise tax. That means any nonprofit-designated charity, college, and hospital that routinely asks us for donations, or charges expensive tuition or medical bills will have to justify paying those high salaries against a hefty new tax.
Get out there and do what has to be done: justify.
*******************
Know your enemies.
In [a recent] email to me, [tax law professor John] Colombo wrote, “Big time college sports is already a cesspool of money, and the federal government doesn’t need to be subsidizing 50-yard-line seats or skyboxes at the University of Alabama or Notre Dame, or Michigan or anywhere else.”
Amazingly, both the House and the Senate now appear to agree with Colombo. A spokesman for Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — and a Texan — told the Austin American-Statesman that the deduction is “the epitome of a special-interest loophole” and that it was forcing taxpayers to “subsidize front-row seats and luxury boxes for wealthy boosters.”
You knew we’d check in on Western Kentucky University again, right? We’ve been following the fortunes of that school ever since Professor Robert Dietel, way back in 2006, excited intense ridicule and hatred from the school’s trustees for warning that going Division I would destroy the school’s finances.
Now ruined, and a laughingstock, WKU does what they all do: It hires a new deer-in-the-headlights president, a guy who looks the part cuz he wears bowties, and they send him out to shut down what’s left of the school’s academic side. Enjoy his picture. Note the deer-in-the-headlights look. And the This is a Real University; I’m a Real President bowtie. The copyright holder on the bowtie thing is sports-whore supreme Gordon Gee.
The trustees insisted that Dietel was an asshole and that classy coaches like Bobby Petrino and an incredibly expensively recruited (but less carefully vetted) football team would make enrollments skyrocket…
That rocket went flaccid and now Bowtie Bambi meets the glare of national news cameras head-on…
SONG OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE
BASKETBALL RECRUIT
‘Come,’ they told me
Pa rum pum pum pum:
‘Your dorm has whores for free.’
Pa rum pum pum pum.
‘You’ll play at KFC.
Yes! KFC YUM!
It’s facing bankruptcy.‘
Pa rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum
After bribery
Pa rum pum pum pum
We lived in luxury
Pa rum pum pum pum
They brought their gifts to me
Pa rum pum pum pum
Rick’s boys took care of me
And we all kept mum
We all played dumb
Rum pum pum pum
Feds came to talk to me
Pa rum pum pum pum
‘Bout our conspiracy
Pa rum pum pum pum
UL told Rick to flee
Pa rum pum pum pum
He sued, and they sued he
And everyone’s scum
Shitting their bum
Rum pum pum pum
Yes, I played for you
Pa rum pum pum pum
Feel a bit dumb
Conn, who started his law practice in a trailer in 1993, had portrayed himself as “Mr. Social Security.” He fueled that persona with outlandish TV commercials and small-scale replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial at his office in eastern Kentucky.
Yes, his name’s even Conn.